


Thunderlight

by pylades_vibing



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang isn't dead!!, Avatar Azula (Avatar), Azula (Avatar) Redemption, Azula and Zuko being good siblings, I will add characters and relationships as they appear, Other, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, don't worry!!, eventually, it's gonna take him a minute to show up but he will be there!!, no beta we die like lu ten, they have some stuff to work through first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 16:22:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28602888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pylades_vibing/pseuds/pylades_vibing
Summary: Fire. Air. Water. Earth.Avatar Roku is dead, and the next three don't make it long enough to fix things. Once again, the Avatar will be born into the Fire Nation, but this time, one that wants her spirit extinguished at all costs. It's dangerous.This time, the spirits take no chances. No more accidents. No more deaths. The world cannot remain at war. This Avatar will be protected. She will not fail. She will not die....Azula always lies. What's one more secret to keep?
Relationships: Azula & Iroh (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Thunderlight

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just gonna warn all of you that there will not be any consistent update schedule, because I'm terrible at that, so I don't want to make any promises I can't keep.

_ Fire. Air. Water. Earth.  _

_ Avatar Roku is dead, and the next Avatar should be born into the Air Nomads. Sozin sends his forces to wipe them out. He almost succeeds. The Avatar is killed in the attack. A young boy, an airbending prodigy, flees the Southern Air Temple in a great storm, and the spirits, in the hope of somehow preserving balance, save his life. _

_ A Northern Water Tribe child wanders away from her mother and freezes to death in the icy cold before she ever discovers her abilities. _

_ The Earth Kingdom Avatar has already mastered his own element, and is fumbling through his first lessons in the others, when an assassin takes him out. _

_ Once again, the Avatar will be born into the Fire Nation, but this time, one that wants her spirit extinguished at all costs. It's dangerous.This time, the spirits take no chances. No more accidents. No more deaths. The airbender boy cannot remain frozen in time forever, and the world cannot remain at war. This Avatar will be protected. She will not fail. She will not die. _

… 

Azula starts firebending before she learns how to walk.

The other thing- that comes later.

She’s eight, and she’s just finished a day of training, and she’s just been changed into her nightclothes. The servants have just left the room, and the door is just swinging closed behind them, and she’s just about to get into bed, when she trips, and falls, and doesn’t hit the floor.

She wonders, for a split second, what caught her. Then, abruptly, and quite rudely, it stops catching her, and she crashes. She whips around, because no one’s supposed to be here, and she’ll have whoever it was banished or executed for bursting into her chambers without her  _ explicit _ permission-

Even by the light of the bright blue flame she conjures in her palm, she can’t make out any figure in the darkness. 

She  _ ought _ to have made the connection then and there. Azula is meant to be a prodigy; she isn’t meant to make stupid mistakes, and she certainly isn’t meant to miss such an obvious clue as to her true nature. But she does, because she’s exhausted. She does, and, later, she brushes it off as a figment of her imagination. Awfully bold of her imagination to take such liberties. She won’t let it happen again.

Then it happens again. Air rushes to her defense during an intense session of training, after her fire fails her. Her instructor claims that she’d subconsciously blocked the fire with her own. He was always an idiot. 

And after the third time- a pile of books suspended in midair for a full minute after they fall from a shelf- Azula can’t deny it any more. After the third time, she decides that she might as well figure out what to do about it.

She’s always known what it is, in the back of her mind. And she knows what it means. Only one person can bend multiple elements. 

The Avatar.

At first, she thinks of telling Father. But by the time she’s stopped avoiding the topic, Father is Firelord, and he’s made his position on the Avatar quite clear. She can’t tell Zuzu, because the dum-dum can’t keep a secret. Ty Lee would ask too many questions, questions that she couldn’t answer. She isn’t sure Mai would even care. It’s always hard to tell with Mai.

(Telling Mother was never an option. Mother was afraid of her when she was only a firebender. Azula is strong, she  _ is _ , but it still hurt when Mother wouldn’t meet her eyes.)

(She couldn’t exactly tell Mother now, anyway, even if she wanted to. Mother is gone, for the good of the nation, and for Zuko’s life. Mother was a traitor, and whether she’s banished or dead or something worse, it’s for the better.)

(She doesn’t miss Mother. Really, she doesn’t.)

So she practices alone. Air doesn’t come quite as easily as fire. It’s difficult, but more than that, it’s frustrating. She’s a  _ prodigy _ . She should be  _ better _ , she should  _ do _ better, and what’s the point of learning this, anyway? No one uses the other elements for anything except disobeying Fire Nation rule! Fire is the superior element, and always has been.

But Azula can’t bring herself to ignore the potential of the thing. After all, the other nations have been fighting off Fire Nation troops for a hundred years, so there has to be some strength in them. And if she wants to learn water or earth, she has to get through this first. Everyone knows that the avatar cycle is essential to learning the four elements. And with the power of all forms of bending on their side, the war would be as good as won.

Even airbending, which history demonstrates is the weakest element, has to have its uses. It’s a lost art- that’s what Zuko would call it, anyway, even if Azula isn’t quite sure what that means. It’s something no one else has done in a century, and, for some reason, that makes it valuable, like those ancient theatre scrolls Mother once bought from a merchant, before everything. 

She hopes it turns out to be a  _ bit _ more useful than theatre scrolls. 

… 

Azula hears the news from a servant. Not directly, of course- the palace servants have a healthy fear of her, and tend not to speak much in her presence. But their whispers aren’t as quiet as they’d like to believe, and she often overhears their gossip. 

Often, what information she gleans from her eavesdropping is meaningless trivia.

Today, it is not.

_ “Did you hear?” _

_ “What?” _

_ “Did you hear what happened? The meeting?” _

_ “The Prince…” _

Zuko had heard, earlier that morning, that the Firelord was holding a war meeting, and got it into his head that he needed to be there. 

_ “An Agni Kai…” _

_ “Spirits, what did the boy do?” _

_ “No one knows…” _

_ “It must have been something disrespectful… Treasonous, even…” _

He’d not stopped asking Uncle Iroh to let him attend. It had been embarrassing, the way he had begged. The meeting was minor. No important decisions were supposed to be made there. Nothing was supposed to be able to go wrong. Not this wrong. 

_ “Who will he face?” _

_ “Does it matter? He doesn’t stand a chance…” _

_ “He’s thirteen, only thirteen…” _

_ “What could a child do to deserve that?” _

Zuko was careless. Zuko was argumentative. He didn’t think before he spoke. He was righteous, and angry, and annoyingly bold, and he wasn’t afraid. Even- perhaps especially- not when he should be.

_ Agni, Zuzu, what did you do? _

… 

Zuko can’t see.

This is the first thing he realizes upon waking up.

The second thing he realizes is that he is in pain. A lot of it. It feels like his face is on  _ fire  _ and-

Oh. Right. Of course it does, because it  _ was _ , that’s the last thing he remembers before- Did he pass out? Spirits, he was weak.

The third thing he realizes is that someone is, quietly, crying. He tries to turn his head towards the sound (or at least where he  _ thinks _ it is; his hearing is… fuzzy, somehow), but the movement sends a jolt of pain to the left side of his face. A hiss escapes his mouth. The crying abruptly stops.

“Zuko?”

Uncle’s voice. It makes sense. Who else would be crying over him?

He swallows. “Yeah?” His voice is quiet, hoarse.

There’s a sound that he assumes to be Uncle getting to his feet, though it’s difficult for him to make out.

“Zuko, are you awake?”

“Yes.” A pause. “How… How long have I been…” 

“A few hours.” 

That was a different voice. It was higher than Uncle’s, and not as soft. He didn’t quite recognize it.

“You fell unconscious as soon as- well, you know- and you’ve barely  _ moved _ . Couldn’t you have given us some sign you were still kicking, dum-dum?”

_ Wait. Azula? _

That was impossible- he’d recognize her voice anywhere, he was sure of it. It didn’t  _ sound _ like Azula. It had the same pitch, and the same inflection, but it wasn’t right. She sounded upset.  _ Genuinely _ upset. Why would Azula…?

“Niece. Do not speak to your brother so harshly.”

A sigh. “Yes, Uncle.”

It  _ was _ her, then. Why did she sound almost as emotional as Uncle? Definitely not over him. Something else must have happened.

He clears his throat. “What happened after I passed out?”

There was a silence after the question. He still couldn’t see (Was something covering his face? Was it something else he didn’t want to think about just yet?) but he could practically  _ feel _ Uncle averting his eyes. 

“Nephew, your father did… He did not consider your injury consequence enough for your actions in the war room.”

Zuko swallows. Of course, _ of course _ it wasn’t enough. He had disrespected the firelord in front of his war council. He had dishonored himself and his family with his surrender in the Agni Kai. 

“What- what did he say?”

There was a quiet moment, and then a scoff. 

“You aren’t going to tell him? Zuzu isn’t made of glass, Uncle. He can take it.”

Well. She sounded a bit more like herself now, even if her cool, detached tone still felt forced. “Wh-”

Azula cuts him off. 

“He believes you need to… to make it up to him, I suppose. You’ve been given a task, and if you complete it, he claims that all will be forgiven.” He lets out a shaky breath. There are footsteps in the hall, and a servant enters- a healer. His head is gently lifted, though not quite gently enough to be painless, and he feels the bandages wrapped around his head being unwound. 

“What are you doing?”

“They’re changing your bandages, idiot. They have to keep  _ that  _ clean, or it’ll get worse.”

“Right. And what is ‘ _ that, _ ’ exactly?”

An uncomfortable silence falls- uncomfortable, but short, as the final layer of the bandages covering Zuko’s eyes is peeled back, and he is blinded by light instead of darkness.


End file.
